Evaluating The Bulls
Now that all the pre-season dreams of contending for a conference title have long since been unmercifully crushed, I thought it’d be appropriate to do a re-evaluation of the Bulls current roster. I will look at each player, taking into account their age and salary and determine their current worth TODAY. I will forget what we though about them heading into the year, because that no longer matters. This column is not about who should be traded, or what rotation should be used, it’s about honestly ranking the assets the Bulls currently possess.
The only way to move forward from this mess of a season is to accurately understand what the team currently has. To build suspense, I will go through the roster alphabetically, and rank the players as assets at the end.
Otherwise, you’d stop reading as soon as I got to Adrian Griffin. A quick note before I begin, I will not include James OnCurry or Demetris Nichols in this analysis, because they’ve only played a combined 25 minutes in the NBA.
Luol Deng
Age: 22
Salary: $3,320,338
PER: 17.58
The man who would be king.
Deng remains the most talented Bull and by far has the most potential of anyone on the roster. The biggest problem in his career so far has been injuries. He’s only played a full season once, and he’s already missed 14 games this year. Currently he’s out for at least a few more weeks with a nagging Achilles injury.
I went in depth into Luol’s talent and potential earlier this year and not much has changed since then. I won’t re-hash what I’ve already written, save to say he remains by far our best asset today and going forward. He has gotten markedly better every year until this one, and he’s still only 22.
It is up to him how far he wants to go as an NBA player. He could be a good starter, an All-Star or even a borderline All-Pro. Who you gonna be Mr. Deng?
Chris Duhon
Age: 25
Salary: $3,248,000
PER: 10.15
Assist Ratio: 35.4
Since stepping into the starting lineup as a rookie and helping lead the team to their first playoff birth in the post-MJ era, Duhon has not progressed too much as a player. That is not as bad as it might sound.
He’s an above average defender, a solid pass-first point guard (his assist ratio is among the league’s best) and an decent catch and shoot shooter. No more, no less. Sure there will be nights like last week against the Warriors when he went off for 9 assists and 34 points on 11-16 shooting, but that is far from the norm. Matt at Blog-a-Bull called it ‘the Duhon game’, a once a year occurrence when Chris hits threes like Steve Kerr. It is by far the exception and not the rule.
He’s started a lot of games for the Bulls over the years, but that’s only because they didn’t have a viable shooting guard and clearly Ben Gordon is better off the bench. He does know how to run a team as a point guard, which makes him valuable for now because he’s the only current player on the roster who can. Nevertheless, at the end of the day he is a very, very good back-up point guard, and an average-to-slightly-below-average starter.
Not a piece to build a championship nucleus around, but a valuable bench player and rotation guy on a championship team.
Ben Gordon
Age: 24
Salary: $4,881,669
PER: 15.93
Ben Gordon is like that girl who’s not hot, but really good looking. You think you have a chance to score with her, and she knows that so she uses it to control you, when really you have no shot.
In other words, he’s a tease.
Yes, he is the best scorer on the team and his fourth quarter heroics are legendary, but that is about where his value ends.
Despite only being 6-3 on a very good day, he is not a point guard, and is a complete defensive liability. For those reasons, he can never be a starter the way Allen Iverson is, despite A.I. being even shorter than Ben.
He is the ideal sixth man. This year he averages 6 more PPG and shoots 14% better from three coming off the bench than starting.
He should not be the primary scorer on his team, rather someone to provide instant offense off the bench, and penalize defenders for focusing on his teammates. With Thabo’s emergence and his high salary demands, it looks more likely by the day that he will no longer be a Bull after this season. He is simply not worth the $50 million he turned down at the beginning of this season.
Aaron Gray
Age: 23
Salary: $427,163
PER: 13.79
It’s tough to draw too many conclusions on Aaron, given he’s only played 320 minutes thus far. One thing that can definitely be said, however, is that he was a steal as the 49th overall pick of the 2007 draft.
In the time he has been on the court, he’s shot well (FG%: 51.8) and has clearly established himself as the Bulls best offensive post player … not that he has much competition.
While his defense still leaves something to be desired, he rebounds well (9.5 per 40 minutes) and he changes the entire Bulls offensive attack when he’s on the floor. “Big Sexy”, as Kendall Gill calls him, allows the Bulls to have an inside-outside attack which is extremely important for them, given that 67% of their shots are jumpers.
He remains largely an unknown, but seems to have already proven he can last in the NBA for a while as a serviceable back-up big man, at the least.
Adrian Griffin
Age: 33
Salary: $1,593,000
PER: 9.16
Griffin is a good “veteran” and nice “chemistry” piece, I guess. He can’t do much anymore, not that he ever could, and the less he plays for the Bulls before he retires, the better.
I will say this for Griff. In the ‘06 playoffs, he started for the Mavericks and they made it to the NBA Finals. In the ‘07 playoffs, the Mavericks lost in the first round in the biggest upset in NBA history.
Kirk Hinrich
Age: 27
Salary: $11,250,000
PER: 13.18
Like Deng, I’ve already done an extensive piece on Kirk this year and, thankfully, he’s played a lot better since that story was written.
Despite his improvement, statistically, this season remains the worst of his career. His PER, eFG%, and AST% are all the lower than even his rookie year.
I divide Kirk’s performance thus far in the ‘07-’08 year into B.S. and A.T. That is, the 34 games Before Sefolosha started, and the 9 After Thabo was a starter. I present the following table to illustrate my point:
| FG% | 3P% | FTA | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BS | 38.43% | 23.76% | 1.9 | 11.3 |
| AT | 43.39% | 44.08% | 2.4 | 19.2 |
| % Change | 12.91% | 85.48% | 28.61% | 69.27% |
I will admit, I got this idea partially from a Sam Smith article, though as usual Sam borrows my ideas weeks after I suggest them. But that’s really neither here nor there.
The good news is that given his exorbitant salary, Hinrich is starting to return to normal. The bad news is that this year’s stunted growth at age 27 probably means he’ll never be the All-Star many thought he could one day develop into.
His defense and shooting make him a solid starter, but that’s problematic, because he flat out cannot run a team. Since he’s really not a point guard, he’d be better off playing the two, but he’s not a good enough scorer to justify starting him at that spot at 6-3.
So what to do? For the time being, playing with Thabo who is a combo guard himself seems to be working. Long-term, Hinrich isn’t worth his salary, even though it does go down every year from here. His salary is still too high to trade, so Chicago is probably stuck with Captain Kirk.
Ideally, like Ben, he is a combo guard off the bench, bringing a different set of tools to the table. Unlike Ben, because he plays defense, he can be a good starter in the NBA. Is he a point guard on a championship team? … No.
Joakim Noah
Age: 22
Salary: $2,135,400
PER: 15.51
Like Gray, as a rookie who hasn’t played a ton of minutes it’s hard to get a firm handle on his abilities. Like Gray as well, though, he has shown he was an excellent pick at the spot by GM John Paxson. Though he no longer leads all rookies in PER, as he did earlier this year, he continues to improve.
I may end up eating these words, but I’d take Noah over all the players drafted ahead of him, save Conley, Durant and Oden. Yes, that includes his college teammate Al Horford.
Defensively, he’s better than Horford and will continue to be. He’ll never be the post-presence Al is, but his inside game is improving nightly. He’s a better passer, and you have to remember, the guy was a guard in high school. He has only begun to scratch the surface of his potential in the truest sense of the clichè.
When he’s on the court with Wallace, he allows the “Body” to slide over to the power forward position, where he’s more comfortable. On the defensive side of the court, they form a poor man’s version of Wallace and Rasheed Wallace back in the Detroit heyday.
Aside from being the team leader in +/-, the biggest thing Joakim brings to the table today is his energy and passion. Anybody watching a game has to notice he is the Bulls leader by far in those two qualities. What he’ll bring to the table tomorrow is a mystery, and that’s why he’s so valuable.
Andres Nocioni
Age: 28
Salary: $8,500,000
PER: 14.57
Noce has been the second most consistent Bull this year, behind Joe Smith. He is the only one who’s been here since the playoff run started, whose performance whose hasn’t fallen off the cliff this year. His PPG are the highest of his career.
He has justified the substantial raise Paxson gave him in the off-season, and proven to be someone worth keeping around going forward.
It would really not be too much of a stretch to call him the heart of the team.
He plays hard every night, and while he will have some games where he goes 1-11, there are many more nights where he’ll be 8-15 with 28 points like Tuesday against New Orleans.
He can play defense, rebound, shoot, pass and hustle like the well-rounded Argentine gold medalist he is. He can definitely hold his own as a starter, but on a perfect team he’ll be the crazy guy coming off the bench; in a similar, but less crazy role as fellow countryman Manu Ginobili.
Thabo Sefolosha
Age: 23
Salary: $1,805,160
PER: 10.11
Anyone following the Bulls is aware of Thabo’s emergence over the past month. He has legitimized himself as an NBA starter. He contributes all over the court. For February, he is averaging: 1.0 steals, 1.0 blocks, 6.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 13.2 points.
Don’t forget he’s an excellent defender and can serve as a back-up point guard, too.
He still can’t really shoot. His field goal percentage for the year is 38.9% and it’s even worse from three at 27.7%, but he seems to realize this. During the fourth quarter against the Hornets, he scored eight points on four layups.
At worst Thabo is a serviceable starter, at best he’s Doug Christie, minus the annoying wife.
Joe Smith
Age: 32
Salary: $5,205,000
PER: 17.58
Smith takes the award as the most reliable Bull so far in the ‘07-’08 season. He’s averaged 11 PPG and 5.2 RPG, and made mid-range jump shots like it’s his job. Given it’s pretty much the whole roster’s job to do that, it’s easy to see why he’s been so valuable.
Making roughly $5 million this year and the next, Smith has already proven an excellent ‘07 off-season addition, regardless of what he does from here on out. His PER is actually the highest of his career.
At 32, he’s not going to improve, but he also won’t decline too much before his run with the Bulls is over. Whether he stays or is used as trade bait, he is an excellent asset to have on one’s roster.
Tyrus Thomas
Age: 21
Salary: $3,505,320
PER: 14.19
What to make of this guy? Is he the kid who was so impressive at LSU, that no one batted an eye at when Paxson traded LaMarcus Aldridge for him? Or, is he the guy who despite being a top four pick can’t get off the bench in his second year?
He is clearly a sensitive kid, and has not responded well since being benched Nov. 8 in Scott Skiles’ first attempt to inject life into his team. It was only two games before that, where he had 2 steals, 2 blocks, 14 rebounds and 19 points against the Detroit Pistons in the Bulls first win. He also guarded Rasheed Wallace in the fourth quarter of that game, forcing him to go 2-7 to seal the Bulls victory. Ben Wallace sat the whole fourth quarter.
A friend of mine has an interesting theory, that the Bulls nosedive really started this year when Skiles benched Thomas.
In the 38 games since the benching, he’s only averaged 3.6 rebounds and 5.2 points per game.
So, then what do we have here? A complete, cry-baby bust? Or an unpolished gem, waiting to be discovered?
To begin an answer, I’ll quote briefly from John Hollinger’s recap of his rookie year:
“As a 20-year-old rookie, Thomas had the fourth-best rate of blocks per minute in the NBA, and the best among power forwards … Now here’s the other half of the equation: Thomas also had the second-best rate of steals per minute at his position. Only Charlotte’s Gerald Wallace was ahead of him; Thomas was the top-ranked player 6-9 or taller, and the only one to crack the top 25 overall.”
The same friend has said he sees Thomas in a similar position to where Tyson Chandler was before we traded him and he went out and became awesome for someone else.
Remember, it’s only the kid’s second year, and his disappointing performance thus far has to be taken with a much larger grain of salt than those of Hinrich, Gordon and Deng. While that doesn’t mean he won’t be a bust, it means he also might be our best chance at a perennial All-Star.
Despite what many may say, the jury is still out with regards to who won the Aldridge-Thomas trade … I mean, the Bulls also got Khryapa out of the deal!
Ben Wallace
Age: 33
Salary: Ignorance is Bliss … Trust Me
PER: 12.36
Going again to Matt from Blog-a-Bull, “He’s simply addition by subtraction at this point.” That’s it.
Asset Rank:
1 - Tyrus Thomas - Younger than Deng, extension not coming up, and while Deng has proved he cannot be the best, or second best player on a top team, Tyrus still has that chance.
2 - Luol Deng - Our best current player, hurt by contract status and injury woes.
3 - Joakim Noah - Like the two above, future is very unknown, but already proven he belongs in the NBA, and could one-day win the Defensive Player of the Year Award. I mean, Ben Wallace did … four times.
4 - Andres Nocioni - Above-average player, paid appropriately.
5 - Kirk Hinrich - Above-average player, paid inappropriately.
6 - Ben Gordon - Bulls’ best scorer, also hurt by uncertain contract status.
7 - Thabo Sefolosha - Gaining very, very quickly with each game.
8 - Joe Smith - Mr. Consistent, paid commensurate with what he brings to the court.
9 - Aaron Gray - Realistically could be an NBA starter. I mean, Mikki Moore and Mark Blount have started whole seasons for teams.
10 - Chris Duhon - Tough to put him this low, but below Gray because he’ll be a free agent at the end of the year and Gray is only making the minimum.
11 - Adrian Griffin - It’s Adrian Griffin.
…
100 - Ben Wallace
Notes:
* All salary data came from the “salary” section of HoopsHype.com, linked below:
http://hoopshype.com/salaries/chicago.htm
* All statistics for this page came from 82games.com, Basketball-Reference.com and Knickerblogger.net. The glossaries for the second two sites are linked below:
http://www.knickerblogger.net/index.php/2007/10/29/a-laymans-guide-to-advanced-nba-statistics/
http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html
Tags: Aaron Gray, Adrian Griffin, Andres Nocioni, Ben Gordon, Ben Wallace, Chicago Bulls, Chris Duhon, Joakim Noah, Joe Smith, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Thabo Sefolosha, Tyrus Thomas